


Let It Happen

by Ilostmywho



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Murder Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 22:35:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10054577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilostmywho/pseuds/Ilostmywho
Summary: Will Graham and his adopted son are living out their lives in a small town up North. Late one night, there is a knock on the door.





	

There was a sheen to his boy's dark hair. Nothing like his own. A final remembrance of his mother, of the woman who had held him, temporarily. Even if there wasn't a single ember left in this world with her DNA, then at least there was this boy. The boy clad in a cotton shirt and a pair of wrinkly dress pants.

As if feeling Will's eyes on the back of his neck, the boy turned around. He leaned against his father's knee (because Will was his father, for all intents and purposes. On paper.), braiding his fingers, weighing on his father's jeans clad knee, “Can I open my presents now, dad? Please just one? Please?”

Will leaned back in the leather chair, stroking his neck in submission. “Alright, just one.”

A broad smile, and then the boy hurried to the tree. He almost fell down beneath it, struggling to pick just one. He settled for a box wrapped with a silver tinted paper, rectangular. He weighed it in his hands, slowly letting its content slide to and fro, listening to the sound it made.

His son. Now six years old. Still a child. Still tender and uncontrolled. Hesitant. He'd gotten the good parts from his mothers. The bad parts from his fathers.

The knock came a little after ten, when Victor had fallen asleep.

Will got up from the chair, his backbones crackling, worn out by work. He opened the door. It was snowing outside, fat flakes that sat on the coat of his guest, on its expensive craft. “Hello, doctor Lecter.”

Bentley got up from his cot in the corner, slowly wagging his whitening tail. He investigated a particularly enticing spot on Hannibal's trousers by sniffing on his knee, then went to lie back down by the fireplace.

The lines on Hannibal's face were more prominent. More outspoken. They fit perfectly into his face, into the maze of age.

Older now. Both of them.

Will unscrewed the cap on the whiskey, pouring it into two glasses. “How was your flight?” He gave Hannibal his glass and then sat down in the chair opposite him.

“Good.” Hannibal, in one of his checkered suits, meticulous tie. Sitting comfortably in the worn chair, like he'd done many times before.

“He's doing well in school,” Will said, looking down on the carpet between them.

Hannibal took a sip of his drink, getting situated by crossing his knees.

“He likes history. He doesn't like math, French, English.” Stroking the uneven fabric on the arm support, Will continued. “He thinks homework is 'an absolute waste of time'.”

Hannibal, still holding the glass, smiling, a small telling of amusement. “And what do you say to him?”

“I tell him to do it anyway.”

There were things in this world that were uncomfortable. They had to get done. Uncomfortable subjects that called out to get broached. Countless of boxes that longed to be opened, aching to spill their guts.

The few times Will had had trouble falling asleep, it had been because of Hannibal. He was a constant in his life, a fearful, endless dark woods that Will continued to traverse. Losing his grip, losing his mind. When Will let go, Hannibal went after him. A silent, prolonged shadow over his life that had been looming long enough that he'd forgotten what a sky without it looked like. But these last couple of years, ever since Victor became his responsibility, it became less threatening. More of a passive state, a crutch that he forgot in restaurants. It did not consume him.

You cannot eat the same thing twice.

It was easy to forget being loved. In the every day debris there was no margin for touching. No one to share his bed, no space in the morning routines, there wasn't an inch of time to spare. Not that he'd ever tried letting someone in. Someone who wasn't Hannibal. There wasn't a precise moment where Will had looked at him and opted to never let go. It had happened just as other things happen. A routine had formed which fit him well. A thrum in his fabric, in his weeks. They had assorted themselves. Hannibal did not live with them.

When they asked Will at work, about Victor's mother, he told them a series of half-truths. She died when he was little. And they hadn't asked again. He and Victor lived in a small community far up north. The people were few of words, but not unkind. There was a different way of communicating. Will worked at the boat yard, servicing engines and touching up the boats littering the marina. Work was slow during winter, a couple of projects per month. He could spend an hour on the electrics, two days on maintenance.

* * *

Will pulled on his hair, longer again, to keep it out of his eyes. “Guess I'd better go let him in.”

Having heard his words, Bentley barked again.

“Shush, I'm coming.” Will slung his legs over the edge of the bed, looking for his pajama pants. He pulled them on, retying the string around his waist.

Victor stood beside the dog outside the door, one hand on his long fur. “Bentley woke me up.”

“Is that so?” Will asked, grabbing his t-shirt and closing the door. “Come on, I'll tuck you in.” They went to the room at the end of the hallway.

The boy flung himself onto the bed, briskly stuffing his legs under the cover. “Why was Bentley barking?”

Will folded himself down onto the floor and the thick carpet. “I don't know. Ask him.”

The dog, who'd jumped onto the bed, looked back at the boy.

“Why were you barking, Bentley?”

Leaning in, Victor held his head close to the dog's. “He's not saying anything.”

Bentley scratched his ear with his hind paw, having nothing to say.

Some time later Will slipped back into his bed, this time letting Bentley in along with him. The dog got situated between him and his guest. An odd thing to call him, but that was what he was. Guest, because he didn't live there.

Bentley huffed, got up again, spun four times and finally settled for a spot closer to Will's legs.

“I'm afraid Bentley doesn't trust me,” Hannibal remarked.

Will burrowed his head down among the pillows, then peered at the man beside him. “Clever boy.”


End file.
